Salesman said our finance PCP agreement would end on 31/3/19, in 3 years time, which obviously isn't right if I only receive the car today. It means I pay for the car for 3 years but I have had it for slightly less time.
He has done it as dealership needed to show the car was sold in March. I would have much preferred he was honest from the onset regarding why he was doing it.
He has subsequently sent an email saying the car can be returned on 5/4/19 so I won't lose the extra days but finance agreement shows 31/3. I feel like I should maybe complain a little more?
Hi MoMo
I’m in a similar situation to yourself.
In my case the key dates are:
Agility Agreement signed by me on the 8th of the month
Agreement commenced (according to the details of the agreement available via the Mercedes ME Finance portal) on 11th of the month
Registered with the DVLA on the 15th of the month and delivered the same day
Firstly you need to be talking to MB Finance and not the dealer about this. Your agreement is with the finance company who technically own the vehicle. What the dealer says about return dates is not really relevant.
I was suspicious about the Agility agreement when it was initially presented to me. In my view it is badly drafted and deficient in a number of respects. For example, it defines the crucial “Start Date” as simply being “the date of this Agreement”. This is a non sequitur. Is it the delivery date, the date I signed the agreement, or the date that MB Finance executed the agreement?
The dealer told me it should (in their opinion) be the date of delivery. However they claim to often have problems with MB Finance back office systems and have seen all sorts of dates used by MB.
Because I anticipated issues with this agreement I telephoned MB Finance on 3 separate occasions to clarify certain details before I signed and in particular the start date. This revealed that their depth of knowledge is zero. The answers I received were ambivalent – the best they could come up with was that the start date was the date they received the documentation from the dealer. This sort of makes sense (this is probably the date the agreement is executed by MB Finance) but does mean that the start date may bear no relationship to the delivery date.
Forwarned about this, I refused to sign the agreement until as close as possible to the intended delivery date. Unfortunately the dealer may want the agreement signed in advance in order to avoid any risk that MB may not execute the agreement. Although unlikely, if MB do not execute the agreement for any reason, the dealer would have delivered a vehicle for which he has no payment.
This could all be avoided if the Agility Agreement were worded appropriately.
So like you, I have “lost” 4 days. I didn’t take it further as life is just too short to deal with MB’s deficiencies.
Let us know how you get on if you take it further.
